Nightfall is a 1956 American crime film noir directed by Jacques Tourneur and starring Aldo Ray, Brian Keith and Anne Bancroft.

At night on a busy Los Angeles sidewalk, James "Jim" Vanning (Aldo Ray) wanders aimlessly, avoiding bright lights and police cars, while he's being watched by a man who is later revealed to be insurance investigator Ben Fraser (James Gregory).

At dinner, Marie reveals that she is a model; Vanning tells her he is a commercial artist who has lived in several places but does not say much else about his past.

Leaving the restaurant, Marie and Vanning encounter two thuggish men, John (Brian Keith) and "Red" (Rudy Bond).

Near the town of Moose, Wyoming, Vanning and his friend Dr. Edward Gurston ("Doc") have been camping, hunting, and fishing.

When they spot John and Red coming out of a car on the street, they go out the building's back door to Vanning's apartment.

He wants to retrieve the money from Wyoming to prove his innocence and has been waiting for the roads to clear there, but he will have to search for it because he really cannot remember where he let it go.

Following a standoff, Red, intent on keeping all the money for himself, shoots John and retreats to a nearby snowplow which he drives toward the shack.

[7] Filming took place in downtown Los Angeles on Hollywood Boulevard and other locations, including MacArthur Park and the J.W.

[9] In a contemporary review Marjory Adams declared Nightfall, "a heart-pounding experience that had all that a suspense-yearning public could hope for," but its plot had enough holes in it to “drive two trucks through".

[10] Variety published a review on December 5, 1956, stating that the film had "a generous slice of mystery, action and suspense" but the modest budget only delivered fair entertainment.

[12] Retrospective critic Dennis Schwartz felt that Jacques Tourneur got the most out of a “minor film noir about a paranoid man haunted by his past".

[13] Critic Jay Seaver wrote, "Nightfall isn't worried about purity of genre; it occasionally threatens to become an almost light-hearted caper movie..,” which he regarded as falling somewhere between mediocrity and Tourneur’s very best.

Although he is a victim of several mischances, Vanning struggles to “comprehend how violent but basically simple past occurrences have put him in such a dangerous and complicated present.